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Secretary-general Ban-Ki Moon has submitted his annual report to the general assembly outlining the use of the CERF in 2015

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Lara Palmisano

September 21, 2016

he report describes the activities of the Central Emergency Response Fund from 1 January to 31 December 2015 and concludes that “the Fund has continued to demonstrate its value in funding timely, targeted and reliable life-saving assistance to people in humanitarian crises.”

During the reporting period, the Emergency Relief Coordinator disbursed $469.7 million for humanitarian assistance through 464 projects in 45 countries. There was a regional shift in the allocation of grants from the Fund compared with 2014. A total of $122.7 million was allocated for interventions in the Middle East2 in 2015, which represented 26 per cent of all allocations compared with 10.9 per cent in 2014. Nearly all allocations to the Middle East were related to conflict.

The Fund’s second major focus in 2015 was climate-related emergencies. More than one quarter of all disbursements ($124 million) assisted people affected by such events, a substantial increase compared with $41.5 million in 2014. The high 2015 allocations in this area were partly driven by the response to El Niño.

The Emergency Relief Coordinator allocated $152 million for the humanitarian response related to these level-three crises, or about one third of 2015 allocations. The largest allocation went to the Syria crisis with $77.4 million to bring assistance to millions of Syrians affected by the conflict and people displaced in the neighboring countries as a result.

As of 31 December 2015, the Fund had received $400.3 million for 2015, meeting 89 per cent of its annual $450 million target. The shortfall of $49.7 million was largely due to a strong United States dollar vis-à-vis core donor currencies. In his report for the World Humanitarian Summit, the Secretary-General called for an expansion of the Fund to $1 billion by 2018.